Famous Sounding Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Sounding poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sounding poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sounding poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

See also:

France the 18th year of These States

by Walt Whitman
 1
A GREAT year and place; 
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s heart closer
 than
 any yet. 

I walk’d the shores of my Eastern Sea, 
Heard over the waves the little voice, 
Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon,
 curses,
 shouts, crash of falling buildings;
Was not so sick from...Read more of this...

Ode To William H. Channing

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Though loth to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My buried thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blind worm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife.

Or who,...Read more of this...

The Night Dance

by Thomas Moore
 Strike the gay harp! see the moon is on high, 
And, as true to her beam as the tides of the ocean, 
Young hearts, when they feel the soft light of her eye, 
Obey the mute call, and heave into motion. 
Then, sound notes -- the gayest, the lightest, 
That ever took wing, when heaven look'd brightest 
Again! Again!...Read more of this...

Again -- his voice is at the door --

by Emily Dickinson
 Again -- his voice is at the door --
I feel the old Degree --
I hear him ask the servant
For such an one -- as me --

I take a flower -- as I go --
My face to justify --
He never saw me -- in this life --
I might surprise his eye!

I cross the Hall with mingled steps --
I -- silent...Read more of this...

Docks

by Carl Sandburg
 STROLLING along
By the teeming docks,
I watch the ships put out.
Black ships that heave and lunge
And move like mastodons
Arising from lethargic sleep.

The fathomed harbor
Calls them not nor dares
Them to a strain of action,
But outward, on and outward,
Sounding low-reverberating calls,
Shaggy in the half-lit distance,
They pass the pointed headland,
View the wide, far-lifting wilderness
And leap with cumulative speed
To test the challenge of the...Read more of this...

Poetry

by Marianne Moore
 I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all 
 this fiddle.
 Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one 
 discovers in
 it after all, a place for the genuine.
 Hands that can grasp, eyes
 that can dilate, hair that can rise
 if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation...Read more of this...

A Love Song

by D. H. Lawrence
 Reject me not if I should say to you 
I do forget the sounding of your voice, 
I do forget your eyes that searching through 
The mists perceive our marriage, and rejoice. 

Yet, when the apple-blossom opens wide 
Under the pallid moonlight's fingering, 
I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide 
My eyes from diligent work, malingering....Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 04: Nightmare

by Conrad Aiken
 'Draw three cards, and I will tell your future . . .
Draw three cards, and lay them down,
Rest your palms upon them, stare at the crystal,
And think of time . . . My father was a clown,
My mother was a gypsy out of Egypt;
And she was gotten with child in a strange way;
And I was born in a cold...Read more of this...

The Meeting

by Friedrich von Schiller
 I see her still--by her fair train surrounded,
The fairest of them all, she took her place;
Afar I stood, by her bright charms confounded,
For, oh! they dazzled with their heavenly grace.
With awe my soul was filled--with bliss unbounded,
While gazing on her softly radiant face;
But soon, as if up-borne on wings of fire,
My fingers 'gan to sweep the sounding lyre.

The thoughts...Read more of this...

LEnvoi

by Robert William Service
 My job is done; my rhymes are ranked and ready,
 My word-battalions marching verse by verse;
Here stanza-companies are none too steady;
 There print-platoons are weak, but might be worse.
And as in marshalled order I review them,
 My type-brigades, unfearful of the fray,
My eyes that seek their faults are seeing through them
 Immortal visions of an epic day.

It seems I'm...Read more of this...

A Translation Of The Nightingale Out Of Strada

by William Strode
 Now the declining sun 'gan downwards bend
From higher heavens, and from his locks did send
A milder flame, when near to Tiber's flow
A lutinist allay'd his careful woe
With sounding charms, and in a greeny seat
Of shady oake took shelter from the heat.
A Nightingale oreheard him, that did use
To sojourn in the neighbour groves, the muse
That fill'd the place, the Syren...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 BY sunny market-place and street
Wherever I go my drum I beat,
And wherever I go in my coat of red
The ribbons flutter about my head.

I seek recruits for wars to come -
For slaughterless wars I beat the drum,
And the shilling I give to each new ally
Is hope to live and courage to die.

I know that new recruits shall come
Wherever I...Read more of this...

The Village Garden

by Amy Levy
 To E.M.S.


Here, where your garden fenced about and still is,
Here, where the unmoved summer air is sweet
With mixed delight of lavender and lilies,
Dreaming I linger in the noontide heat.

Of many summers are the trees recorders,
The turf a carpet many summers wove;
Old-fashioned blossoms cluster in the borders,
Love-in-a-mist and crimson-hearted clove.

All breathes of peace and sunshine in the present,
All tells of...Read more of this...

On the Funeral of Charles the First

by William Lisle Bowles
 The castle clock had tolled midnight:
With mattock and with spade,
And silent, by the torches' light,
His corse in earth we laid.

The coffin bore his name, that those
Of other years might know,
When earth its secrets should disclose,
Whose bones were laid below.

"Peace to the dead" no children sung,
Slow pacing up the nave,--
No prayers were read, no knell was rung,
As deep we dug...Read more of this...

Sonnet 32 - The first time that the sun rose on thine oath

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon
And quickly tied to make a lasting troth.
Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;
And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man's love!—more like an out-of-tune
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth
To...Read more of this...

Aubade

by William Shakespeare
 JANE, Jane, 
Tall as a crane, 
The morning light creaks down again;

Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair, 
Jane, Jane, come down the stair.

Each dull blunt wooden stalactite 
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,

Sounding like an overtone 
From some lonely world unknown.

But the creaking empty light 
Will never harden into sight,

Will never penetrate your brain 
With overtones like the blunt rain.

The...Read more of this...

Alexanders Feast; Or The Power Of Music

by John Dryden
 'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son— 
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne;
His valiant peers were placed around,
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound
(So should desert in arms be crowned);
The lovely Thais by his side
Sate like a blooming eastern bride
In flower of youth and beauty's pride:— 
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None...Read more of this...

Britannias Pastorals

by William Browne
 Now as an angler melancholy standing
Upon a green bank yielding room for landing,
A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook,
Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook:
Here pulls his line, there throws it in again,
Mendeth his cork and bait, but all in vain,
He long stands viewing of the curled stream;
At last a hungry pike, or well-grown bream
Snatch...Read more of this...

A Marching Song

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 We mix from many lands,
We march for very far;
In hearts and lips and hands
Our staffs and weapons are;
The light we walk in darkens sun and moon and star.

It doth not flame and wane
With years and spheres that roll,
Storm cannot shake nor stain
The strength that makes it whole,
The fire that moulds and moves it of the sovereign soul.

We are they...Read more of this...

The Battle of Atbara

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye Sons of Great Britain, pray list to me,
And I'll tell ye of a great victory.
Where the British defeated the Dervishes, without delay,
At the Battle of Atbara, without dismay. 

The attack took place, 'twas on the 8th of April, in the early morning dawn,
And the British behaved manfully to a man;
And Mahmud's front was raked fearfully, before the assault...Read more of this...

Or from that Sea of Time

by Walt Whitman
 1
OR, from that Sea of Time, 
Spray, blown by the wind—a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells; 
(O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless! 
Yet will you not, to the tympans of temples held, 
Murmurs and echoes still bring up—Eternity’s music, faint and far,
Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica’s rim—strains for the Soul of the Prairies, 
Whisper’d reverberations—chords...Read more of this...

Discovery

by A S J Tessimond
 When you are slightly drunk
Things are so close, so friendly.
The road asks to be walked upon,
The road rewards you for walking
With firm upward contact answering your downward contact
Like the pressure of a hand in yours.
You think - this studious balancing
Of right leg while left leg advances, of left while right,
How splendid
Like somebody-or-other-on-a-peak-in-Darien!
How cleverly that seat shapes the body of...Read more of this...

Pan to Artemis

by Aleister Crowley
 Uncharmable charmer
Of Bacchus and Mars
In the sounding rebounding
Abyss of the stars!
O virgin in armour,
Thine arrows unsling
In the brilliant resilient
First rays of the spring!

By the force of the fashion
Of love, when I broke
Through the shroud, through the cloud,
Through the storm, through the smoke,
To the mountain of passion
Volcanic that woke ---
By the rage of the mage
I invoke, I invoke!

By the midnight...Read more of this...

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

by William Vaughn Moody
 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of...Read more of this...

Mirth And Mourning

by Anne Bronte
 'O cast away your sorrow; --
A while, at least, be gay!
If grief must come tomorrow,
At least, be glad today! 
'How can you still be sighing
When smiles are everywhere?
The little birds are flying
So blithely through the air;

'The sunshine glows so brightly
O'er all the blooming earth;
And every heart beats lightly, --
Each face is full of mirth.'

'I always feel the deepest gloom
When...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Sounding poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace